Here's a thought....

So I had this long conversation with a close friend this past week about the different "roles" men and women have. He argued that women have an innate nurturing quality to them that makes them better at certain roles than men which cannot be debated. For instance, he would argue the mother should be the primary caretaker of a child when he/she is first born. This made me start to think about the discussions we've been having in these posts and in class.

What do we all think about the argument that women and men are innately built with certain qualities that make men and women better/worse at certain positions? Is this truly a biological difference? Or, are these socially constructed qualities that have put women at a disadvantage in the workplace and in the public sphere? And how can we distinguish between innate qualities and social constructed identities if they seem so natural because perhaps we have been brought up with this type of knowledge so it seems biological? I'm honestly not sure. I do think that women tend to have a nurturing quality to them, in some cases, more than men, but I'm not sure if this is because of the way we identify certain qualities with women or because these qualities women innately possess?

Feminists would argue that is preposterous that women should be taking care of the children at home and be housewives, but this is not my question. Rather, I am wondering if this nurturing quality of women is socially constructed or biological. I've heard many times that women should be the ones taking care of a child right after the child is born because of the attachment that the baby has with the mother while in utero.

The reason I think this pertains to IR is that if this nurturing quality is innate for women, than this could be partly the reason why femininity is seen as less powerful and less likely for a woman to be a powerful political opinion. Why? Well probably because many see hard politics as the most important and cannot seem to associate a nurturing mother with someone who could effectively deal with hard politics. So perhaps the conversation should be why someone who has qualities that are "feminine" are seen as anti-political? Does that mean that mothers cannot be effective political leaders? So, should we should be looking at why certain qualities cannot be associated with politics?

This may have been a rant, but I guess, I am trying to explore the issues of characteristics of women, whether or not they are innate or socially constructed. If they are innate, then we should be asking ourselves why these innate characteristics cannot be employed in the public sphere. If they are socially constructed, how did it come to be this way and has this been a purposeful construction to suppress women?